Truth.
Saturday, May 12, 2012
"It's all fun and games until someone loses an ego."
"...Here is my dedicated and powerful yoga student. She is also going through a massive transition, a real dark night of the soul, questioning everything she thought she knew and exploding nearly all of it, as she lets her former identity slough away like rusted armor. It's a complete spiritual/career/perspective overhaul of who she is and what she wants to do in this life, which all sounds wonderful and healthy and positive, were it not for the headaches and the sleepless nights and the screaming.
As we say in the deeper yoga practice: it's all fun and games until someone loses an ego.
...something in her ego kept her nailed to the emotional floor, stuck like a pinned bug, her body endlessly sick and heart endlessly drained, always looking backwards, re-living stale memories, staring at photos of a life she built but never fully lived in.
You know that feeling? Or something very similar? Oh, I bet you do.
But recently, a shift. A wink of possibility, some forward momentum after far too many years of immobility, ill health and inertia. Someone swept into her life allowing for a fresh blast of why the hell not, of let's get this thing moving. I'm not exactly sure she quite sees it that way, but I sure do.
Here is the question: Is it possible? Are my friends ready? Or will their egos and stories, past patterns and melodramas trap them in an ever-recurring web of lies and bulls--t and suffering? Will yours? Will mine? On a day to day basis, is this not the only real question worth asking?
...Do we stay addicted to our patterns and our former selves, or do we harness the difficult opportunities when we see them, when the chance for change swims into view, knowing they won't wait around for long, knowing, deep down, that if we ignore them the energy will stagnate and congeal into fear and fat, misery and fundamentalist Republican Christianity, never to have hot sex again? There is one thing we know.
There is one thing shared across all traditions and religions, spiritualities and yoga paths, status quos and opportunities for change.
It is ritual. The marker. The sign of movement. You get baptized. You get the bat mitzvah. You perform the hardcore tribal thing with the face paint and the fire and the lions. You drop the hallucinogens and wander for 30 days in the jungle, communing with the specters of the gods. Hey, whatever works.
...Offer something to your gods. Tear up that old iPhoto library. Go on a cleanse. Wander oceanside, write yourself a mantra, repeat it 108 times, then tear it up and toss it to the waves, into the fire, into the compost pile. Swipe your hand across your heart, your crotch, your eyes, anywhere energy cords attach and suck the goddamn life force out of you. Purge. Cleanse. Burn. Ignite anew. What, too hippie? Too New Agey? I don't mind. Neither will your gods."
Friday, May 11, 2012
"Life is... a game, a gamble, a multiple-choice Intelligence Test."
"Hume pointed out that all we can know (directly) is a stream of sensations. Even the hypothesis that there is a block-like entity, the Ego or "me," observing or experiencing this stream of sensations, is inferential, not directly known. Every philosopher since Hume has tried to refute this, not very successfully, because it happens to be true... Yes: this is truth: the stream of sensations is all that is given directly. All else is inference. But is this all of the truth? Does skepticism lead directly to solipsism? Not quite. There is an old Zen story which is worth recalling at this point in our argument. A monk, after long meditation, perceived the facts noted above. In great excitement, he rushed to tell his roshi (Zen teacher), "I have it! I have it! That rock there is inside my head!" "You must have a very big head," said the Teacher, "to hold a rock that size."
...all we know directly is a stream of sensations. The theories that there is an "ego" experiencing this stream, and an "outside" world provoking it, are inferential, unproven and (if we are strict about applying Occam's principle of parsimony) should be rejected as illegitimate.
...Zen teachers, when they recognize that a student has arrived at this womb-like solipsistic stage, hit him, with a wooden staff, hard, on the right shoulder, which sends most striking sensations to damned near every nerve in the body.
After such Shock Therapy, one does not return to the naive objectivity of the ordinary fool or the Randroid. One realizes that there is some sort of Self (although everything one has learned about it is probably false) and some sort of Objective Reality (although everything one has learned about it is also probably false.)
One realizes that life is not a tragedy (as pessimists claim) or a comedy (as optimists assert) or a kind of Moral police court (as theologians would have it) but rather more in the nature of a game, a gamble, a multiple-choice Intelligence Test."
Training.
5/10&11 - P90X 32&33 [missed wkouts]
5/9 - P90X 31 rest/off
5/8 - P90X 30 Chest, Shoulders, Tris
5/7 - P90X 29 Back & Biceps, Abs
5/6 - P90X 28 rest/off
5/5 - P90X 27 substituted X Stretch for Yoga X
5/4 - P90X 26 Core Synergistics
5/3 - P90X 25 X Stretch
5/9 - P90X 31 rest/off
5/8 - P90X 30 Chest, Shoulders, Tris
5/7 - P90X 29 Back & Biceps, Abs
5/6 - P90X 28 rest/off
5/5 - P90X 27 substituted X Stretch for Yoga X
5/4 - P90X 26 Core Synergistics
5/3 - P90X 25 X Stretch
5/2 - P90X 24 Kenpo X - 60m grappling/jiu jitsu
Cooking/Food Log.
 |
| Starting with the usual and then... vacation in Morocco. |
5/1 - coffee, protein shake, water, chicken, beer, coffee w/milk & sugar x2
5/2 - coffee w/milk & sugar x3, paleokit, brownie, water, quesadilla, Sprite
5/3 - water, jerky, tajine, cafe au lait, coke zero, chocolate, scotch
5/4 - water, Coke Zero, chocolate, olives, guacamole, steak, cauliflower, mixed veggies, beer, rum &Coke
5/5 - Coke Zero, western omelette, cafe creme w/sugar, pigeon pie, salad, bread, near beer, Berber coffee, beer, salad, bread, beef skewers, banana, strawberries, coffee w/sugar
5/6 - bread & butter, coffee w/sugar, mint tea & candy, soup, salad, bread, tajine, dessert, cafe creme, chocolate pastry, Coke Zero, chocolate, pizza, beer, stromboli
5/7 - coffee w/sugar & milk, water, pizza, beer, stromboli, chocolate, Coke Zero, McDonald's burgers & fries, scotch
5/8 - coffee w/sugar & milk x2, coconut water x3, chocolate, Coke Zero, chocolate pastry, chicken, burrito, beer, fajitas, quesadilla
5/9 - coffee w/milk & sugar, bread & butter, burger, fries, beer, chocolate ice cream, chicken, potatoes, bread, butter